The Old New England Home.--The Sheltered Village.--The
Ancient Buildings.--Dormer Windows.--An Old Puritanical
Home.--The Old Puritan Church.--The Burying-Ground.--Deacon
Smith, his Habits and his Helpers.--Major Simeon Giles, his
Mansion and his Ancestry.--Old Doctor Styles.--Crapo
Jackson, the Sexton.--"Training Days."--Militia
Dignitaries.--Major Boles.--Major General
Peabody.--Preparations and Achievements.--Demolition of an
Apple Cart.--"Shoulder Arms!"--Colonel Asher Peabody.--The
Boys, and their World.--My Last Look at my Native Village.
Reader, there are mental pictures in the wilderness, as vivid as any in
nature. They are the pictures of the past. They haunt the pioneer by day
and by night. They go with him over the fields--sit down with him by the
streams--linger around his evening hearth, and rise up in his dreams.
I was born in New England. The village was very old, and had received and
discharged generations of men. Some two centuries ago, a troop of
iron-sided old pilgrims, full of theology and man's rights, an offshoot of
a larger body, with their pastor at their head, founded the place, and gave
it tone and direction.
This village is very beautiful now. It stands sheltered between two
mountains that cast their morning and evening shadows over it. A long
stretch of meadow land lies between, through which a river, fringed with
willows, lazily lingers and twists in elbows and half circles. The
mountains sometimes look down very grim at the valley, and in places have
advanced almost across it. There are a great many profiles detected by the
imagination in their outline. Cotton Mather's face has been discovered in
one huge rock--and the old fellow's head seems to withstand the storms of
nature about as successfully as it did the storms of life. The "Devil's
Pulpit"--a group of splintered shafts of Gothic appearance--is near by, and
superstitious persons used to think that during every thunder-storm his
majesty entered it, arrayed in garments of fire, and gave the Puritan a
sound lecture.
There are all kinds of buildings in this village. These buildings mark the
age in which they were erected, and are the real monuments of their
founders. They are as they were. They have not been marred or profaned by
modern notions. Some are very eccentric piles, hoary with age, full of
angles and sharp corners; and some are painfully plain and severe. They all
have a face, a cast of countenance, an expression--they almost talk the
English of a hundred and fifty years ago. The row of dormer windows on the
roof are to me great eyes that frown down upon the frivolity and
thoughtlessness of the present--and those eyes are full of theology and
civil rights. They look as though they were watching a Quaker, or reading
the Stamp Act. The very souls of their architects are transferred to them.
I never enter one, even in these fearless times, without feeling nervous
and sober, half expecting to run afoul of its original proprietor, with
some interrogatory about my business, and the wickedness of his
descendants.
There used to stand--there is still standing--one of these queer piles upon
a bluff overlooking the river. It was built of stone, and is very much
moss-grown. It fairly looks daggers at the ambitious little structures that
have sprouted up by its side. It is a heap of Puritanical thoughts--visible
thoughts--all hardened into wood and rock. There it has stood, frowning and
frowning, for a century and a half. It is full of great massive timbers and
stones, and is as stout as the heart of its founder. A weather-cock is
attached to one of the chimneys--a sheet-iron angel, lying on his breast,
and blowing a trumpet, and the wind shifts him round and round over
different parts of the village. This angel has blown away thousands of men;
but there he lies, his cheeks puffed, blowing yet, as fresh and healthy as
ever.
The internal arrangement of this building is characteristic. A dark, gloomy
hall--an enormous fireplace, extending across the whole end of a room--a
quaint pair of andirons, which run up very high and prim, and turn back
like a hook, with a dog's head growling on each tip. There are strange
pictures on the walls, which have been preserved in memory of the
past--Moses leading the Children of Israel through the Wilderness--Samson
slaying the Lion--David cutting off the head of Goliath--stern shadows of
the men who used to study them--not very remarkable works of art, but vivid
outlines of the scenes themselves.
This house has been occupied by an illustrious line of men, distinguished
as divines, lawyers, and reformers; and it seems to glow with the fires
they kindled in it--in fact, I believe it is inhabited by them yet. I
believe that Parson ----, who lived under its roof for more than half a
century, and preached during that time in the church near by, occasionally
mounts his low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, round-cornered coat, short
breeches, knee-buckles, and heavy shoes, ties on his white neckcloth, and
takes his cane, and, in a spiritual way, wanders back to his mansion, sits
down again before the capacious fireplace, and meditates an hour or two as
he used to do in life. He is one of those who keep the house company and
give to it its sober air of determination and defiance.
The old Puritan church stands near by. Time has thrown a mantle of moss
over it. When erected, it was shingled from foundation to steeple--and a
quaint little pepper-box steeple it was. Square, high, solemn-looking pews
may be yet seen inside. The pulpit is perched away up under the eaves, like
a swallow's nest. It is reached by a flight of steps almost as long as
Jacob's ladder. It is covered with names, inscriptions written by men and
women who were dust long ago. It looks like the place where "Old Hundred"
was born, lived, and died--sombre, earnest, immovable.
A burying-ground, ancient as the church, closes in on its three sides, and
partly encircles it in its arms. There is preaching there yet. The dust of
the living and dead congregations are one:
"Part of the host have crossed the flood,
And part are crossing now."
Rough tombstones--mere ragged slugs, torn from some quarry--rounded and
smoothed a little by a pious hand--stand half buried in the earth, pointing
to the silent sleeper below. And then there are marble slabs, of a more
modern date--yet very old--leaning this way and that, and nodding at each
other. Preachers and congregations lie side by side, and it is one eternal
Sabbath now. There are quaint pictures, and holy pictures, and horrible
pictures chiselled out on these slabs. Skeleton Death, triumphantly
marching with his scythe! Skulls, angels--and occasionally a figure that
looks like his Satanic Majesty! Epitaphs full of theology, wit, and
practical wisdom, are strewn around with an unsparing hand.
There are a few genuine specimens of the Puritan stock lingering in this
village--great boulders that lie around in society, like granite blocks on
the earth, dropped by Time in his flight, and overlooked or forgotten.
Deacon Smith is one of them. He and his father, and his father's father,
were born and lived in the house he now occupies. He has almost reached
fourscore and ten years. He wears the costume of 'seventy-six, inside and
out. His habits are as uniform and regular as the swing of the pendulum. He
retires at nine, rises at four, breakfasts at six, and dines at twelve; and
this is done to a fraction--no allowance is made for circumstances--what
are circumstances in the way of one of his rules? He marches to bed at the
time, and would, if he left the President of the Republic behind him--he
sits down to his table at the time, whether there is a dish on it or not.
Law is law with him.
The Deacon hates royalty and the British--he never overlooked the blood
they shed in the Revolution. He seldom speaks to an Englishman. He hates
interlopers, innovations, modern improvements; and I recollect well how he
poured out his vials of wrath upon the first buggy wagon that he saw. He
said it was a "very nice thing to sleep in." He left the church for some
months when stoves were first put up, and declared that it was "as great a
sacrilege as was ever committed, and enough to overthrow the piety of a
saint. Religion would keep a man warm anywhere." He says he "thinks the
Puritan blood is running down into slops! folks are rushing headlong to
perdition! that there hasn't been a man in the village for twenty years who
ought to be intrusted with himself"--and it seems to him that the world is
winding up business.
When the Deacon rises, he goes around his house, hawking, spitting,
slamming doors, tumbling down wood, just to cast a slur on the lazy habits
of modern days. Sometimes he tramps up and down the village, two hours
before day, a-hemming, hawing, and sneezing, for the purpose of letting the
sluggards understand he is stirring. He has been known, on more than one
occasion, to give vent to his feelings, at this early hour, by blowing the
family dinner-horn, and declaring, as the blast echoed away, "that no
Christian man could sleep, after such a call."
The Deacon has a few helpers about him, who think as he thinks--but they
are very few. When they meet, the world takes a most inhuman raking--they
spare neither "age, sex, nor condition."
But the leading business men of the village are of a different stamp--not
Puritans, but Puritanical--the same rock with the corners knocked off--of
less strength, but more polish. They reverence their fathers, keep the
religious and political altar they have raised burning, but are not so
regardless of temporal comforts; in a word, they are Yankees.
Major Simeon Giles is a specimen. It is difficult to draw his portrait. He
has a hard, dry face, which looks as though it had been turned out from a
seasoned white-oak knot. He wears a grievous expression, lying somewhere
between sobriety and melancholy. His money, character, and family have made
him a great man--he is a leading personage in church and state, and
exercises a wonderful influence in every department of society. The deacon
is full of dry expressions, and many of his cool, sly remarks have become
proverbs; but the hardest thing he ever said was after his pious soul had
been very much vexed, when he observed, "that if Providence should see fit
to remove Mr. ---- from this vale of tears, he would endeavor to resign
himself to the stroke."
Major Simeon has many severe struggles within him, between the flesh and
the spirit. His avarice and piety are both strong, and the former sometimes
gains a temporary advantage. All his movements are governed by method. He
remains so long at his store, so long at his house, "takes a journey" with
his family once a year, "has a place for everything, and everything in its
place,"--a peg for his hat, a corner for his boots--and he is almost as
rigid in observing and enforcing his laws as Deacon Smith.
Major Simeon is supreme, of course, over his own family. He never trifles
with his children. A cold shadow falls around him, which often silences
their voice of mirth and ringing laugh--the effect of reverence, however,
more than fear.
Major Giles lives in the Old Giles Mansion. I will not pretend to say how
many Gileses have occupied it. Their portraits are hanging upon its walls,
and their bodies lie in the burying-ground; a long row of them, all the
way across it, and half back again--bud, blossom, and gathered fruit. There
is the portrait of the celebrated Elnathan Giles, who died during the reign
of Queen Anne. He looks very stern. He had passed through the scenes of the
Salem witchcraft, and had been personally connected with the
excitement--had attended several of the trials as a witness; was bewitched
once himself--and, according to family tradition, saw one witch hung--an
out-and-out witch--who had bridled many innocent people at midnight, sailed
through chamber windows, and hurry-scurried off with them, astride a
broomstick.
Next to him hangs the face of his son, Colonel Ethelbert, as he was called,
who lived just long enough to fight at Bunker Hill. He had been a militia
colonel before the Revolution, and militia colonels were something in those
days. He made a ferocious-looking portrait, certainly. One can almost smell
gunpowder in the room. He is dressed up in his military coat, standing
collar, an epaulet on his shoulder; and there are strewn around him, in the
background, armies, artillery, drums, and banners. No wonder the Americans
were victorious. And then came the face of Major Simeon, whom I have
described.
The wives of these men are also done up in oil, and hang meekly and
submissively by the side of their lords, as all wives should, or rather as
all wives did, in those days--and actually died without knowing how much
they were oppressed.
There are other things besides portraits, to remind Major Simeon of his
ancestry. There is a tree still standing (strange that a tree should
outlive generations of men), that Elnathan planted with his own hand, on
the day Ethelbert was born--a stately elm, whose branches, in their
magnificent curve, almost sweep the ground. This tree shadowed the cold
face of both Elnathan and Ethelbert, when their coffins were closed for the
last time beneath it. There is the spring, more than half a century old,
that bubbles from the hill, and goes trickling, leaping, and flashing down
the green slope, singing away to itself as sweetly as ever. The old
lilac-bush, too, has outlived thousands whose hands have plucked its
blossoms, and yet it bursts out in the spring, and looks as fresh as the
children who play beneath it.
It has been thought that Major Simeon and his family were aristocratic.
There is a stately air about them, when they enter church, that smacks of
blood. And the Major himself has often declared that, while "stock isn't
everything, it is a great consolation to know, in his case, that the name
of Giles has never been stained."
There are several other families in the village whose ancestry runs back as
far as the Gileses'; and they have about them as many heirlooms to remind
them of it.
The village is filled with other characters, quite as original as any I
have described. They are important personages, and have lived in it a long
time; but they have no family history to fall back upon. There is Major
Follett, who still lingers on the shores of time, and sustains a vast
dignity amid his declining years. His head is very white, his hat very
sleek, and his silk vest is piled very full of ruffles. He carries a
gold-headed cane, and when he marches through the streets, it rises and
falls with great emphasis, in harmony with his right foot. Now and then he
gives out an a-hem!--one of the lordly kind--that fairly awes down his
inferiors. He is a remarkable talker, too, among his equals--uses words
having a great many syllables. He never spits, but "expectorates"--his
pains are all "paroxysms"--talks about the "foreshadowing of events"--and
all his periods are as round and stately as the march of a Roman army. The
Major has actually made his assumed dignity pave his way in life--it has
given him wealth and influence among those who are intrinsically his
superiors, but who do not know how to put on the airs of consequence.
Old Doctor Styles is living yet. He has survived two or three crops of
customers--helped them in and out of the world--balanced their
accounts--and his face is as ruddy, his laugh as hearty, his stories as
ludicrous, his nose as full of snuff, as though nothing melancholy had ever
happened in his practice. Eighty odd and more, he stands as straight as a
staff. Death has been so long a business with him, and he has stared it for
so many years in the face, that he really does not know, or care, how near
he is to it himself.
Crapo Jackson, the sexton, is one of the characters. He has announced the
end of Doctor Styles's labor a great many hundred times through the belfry,
and helped cover up what remained. Crapo is black, but he has a fine heart.
He is a perfect master of his work. He puts on an air of melancholy and
circumspection at a funeral, that becomes the occasion. He sings, from door
to door, a hymn on Christmas mornings, with cap in hand extended for his
"quarter"--peddles gingerbread on training days--and aids the female
portion of the community on festival occasions, and does a great many more
things, "too numerous to mention."
Speaking of "training days"--dear me!--there used to be a military spirit
in this village, in times past. I can recollect the names of scores of
generals, majors, colonels, captains, and even corporals--yes,
corporals--every man couldn't be a corporal in those times. Why, bless your
soul, reader! there was General Peabody, and General Jones, and Major
Goodwin, and Major Boles, and any quantity of colonels. And then "training
day"--nobody worked--the village was upside down--"'Seventy-six" was in
command, and martial law declared.
Major Boles I recollect, when in the active discharge of his duty. He
always grew serious as the great militia muster drew on. He went away off
by himself, into the chamber, where he could be alone with the spirits of
his forefathers, and burnished up his sword, shook out the dust from his
regimentals--warned his children to stand out of the way--and looked
ferociously at his wife. He knew he was _Major_ Boles, and he knew every
other respectable man knew it.
But Major-General Peabody was the greatest general _I_ ever saw. When a
boy, I looked upon him as a very blood-thirsty man, and nothing would have
induced me to go near him. He was a little fellow in stature, had a hard
round paunch that looked like an iron pot, and short, thick, dropsical
legs. (Major Boles, who was a little envious, said they were stuffed, which
produced a coldness between them.) His face was freckled, and his hair
gray. He wore two massive epaulets, an old Revolutionary cap, shaped like
the moon in its first quarter, from which a white and red feather curved
over his left ear. He had a sword--and such a sword! Nobody dared touch it;
for it was the General's sword!
"Training day" usually opened with a boom from the field-piece, at
sunrise, that shook the hills. About ten in the morning the soldiers began
to pour in from all quarters. Drums and fifes, and muskets and rifles,
filed along in confusion,--ambitious companies in uniform--common militia,
who were out according to law. Uncle Joe Billings, who had played the
bass-drum for more than twenty years (poor old man, he is dead now!) was
seen gravely marching along all by himself, his drum slung about his neck,
his head erect, his step firm, pushing on to head-quarters at the measured
beat of his own music, now and then cutting a flourish with his right hand,
for the amusement of the children who were capering around him. Knots of
soldiers gathered about the tavern, and made a circle for the music to
practise, preparatory to the great come-off. Then came the good old
continental tunes that were full of fight, played by old fifers and
drummers that had been through the wars; men who made a solemn and earnest
thing of martial music--who reverenced it as the sacred voice of liberty,
not to be trifled with, who thought of Bunker Hill until the tears started
from their eyes. Those old airs, that used to echo among the mountains of
New England--where are they?
But the captains, and colonels, and generals did not mix with the common
soldiers on training day--no! nor speak to them. Rank meant something. They
felt as though they were out in a war. They kept themselves covered from
the public gaze away off in a secluded corner of the tavern, and were
waited upon with great respect by those of inferior grade. Sometimes a
guard was stationed at the door to prevent a crowd upon their dignity.
Occasionally, one of them would bustle out among the rank and file on some
momentous duty, fairly blazing with gold and silver, lace and feathers;
but there was never an instance of one of these characters recognizing even
his own brother while in military costume. Major Boles has often said that
"no officer can be expected to see small things when in the active
discharge of his duty."
At about eleven o'clock the solemn roll of the drums was heard, and loud
voices of command followed; and swords flashed, and feathers danced, in the
organization of the companies; and then came the training--real training--a
mile down street; a mile back again; a perfect roar of music; and flags
flying--horses prancing. What was rain, or dust, or mud with such an army!
They marched straight through it; it was nothing to war. The sweat poured
down, but the army moved on for hours and hours in its terrible march.
The great sight of the day, however, was the Major-General and his staff--I
mean, of course, Major-General Peabody. They were not seen until about
three o'clock in the afternoon; it being customary for them to withdraw
from public observation the day prior to the muster. When the army was
drawn up in the field, preparatory to inspection, there was usually a pause
of an hour--a pause that was deeply impressive. We never knew exactly where
the General and his staff were concealed. Some persons said they were
housed in one place, some in another; but, upon the discharge of a cannon,
they burst upon us, glittering like the sun, and came cantering down the
road with perfect fury, in a cloud of dust, followed by a score of boys who
were on a sharp run to "keep up."
General Peabody and his staff always rushed headlong into the field,
without looking to the right or left. I recollect that on one occasion he
demolished an apple-cart, and absolutely turned everything topsy-turvy,
besides creating great consternation among the by-standers; but it did not
disturb him, and it was only upon information the next day that he knew
that anything serious had happened.
Passing the ruins of the apple-cart, and entering within the guarded lines,
he halted, and took a survey of his troops. Then the music saluted him, and
the companies waved their flags. He rode a little nearer, rose in his
stirrups, jerked out his sword spitefully, and, looking ferociously, cried
out, "Shoulder arms!" This cry was just as spitefully repeated by the
subordinate officers; and, after a while, the privates, one after another,
lazily raised their "pieces" to their shoulders. The General was in the act
of rising again, and was drawing in his breath for a command of thunder,
when his horse wheeled at the report of a musket that went off in the
lines, and came near upsetting him, feathers and all; but he fell into the
arms of one of his aids, and--swore, as I was at the time credibly
informed, though I could hardly believe it.
The General very soon righted himself, and, striking his horse several
violent blows across his rump, cut a great many flourishes on the field, to
the utter astonishment of the lookers-on. He then rushed through the orders
of the day like a madman, and was manifestly utterly fearless of
consequences.
I hope my readers are satisfied that Major-General Peabody was a great
military character. I recollect, when a boy, that I heard him say, "that he
was very sure _he_ would be the last man to run in a fight,"--"that he was
afraid to trust himself in a battle, for he never could lay down his sword
until the last enemy was massacred!"
The old man was laid under the turf one autumnal afternoon, many years ago,
but his prowess is not forgotten to this day. His son, Colonel Asher
Peabody, who inherited his father's spirit, erected a stately monument over
his remains, which was covered with drums, and fifes, and swords, and
waving banners, and big-mouthed guns, intermixed with texts of Scripture,
the virtues of the deceased, admonitions to the living, &c. This monument
was always as terrific to me as the General himself; and, in my boyish
days, I always contemplated it from a distance, not knowing but that it
might blow up a piece of juvenile impertinence like myself on the spot.
Yes, reader, these were training days in New England; but the military
glory has now actually died out. The last gathering I saw I shall never
forget. It was, indeed, a sorry group, made up of a rusty captain, two or
three faded corporals, and a handful of dare-devil privates, who cared no
more for their country than so many heathen. The officers looked cowed and
heart-broken, and loitered about in a very melancholy way; and it was
evident that the spirit of '76 was on its last legs. I afterwards learned,
I am sorry to say, that the captain, in a fit of patriotic rage, broke his
sword across his knee, and declared "that he never would turn out again as
long as his name was Jones!"
And then, reader, this village was full of boys when I was a boy. Every
village is, you say. Very likely; but _such_ boys! there have never been
anything like them since. They wandered with me Saturday afternoons
through the meadows, where the lark was flitting and singing; and we
related wonderful stories about the future. We cut red-willow canes, made
whistles, and dammed mountain rivulets. Life opened to us with a chant: it
was melody, melody everywhere. There was the mountain gorge, down which we
rolled stones with the voice of thunder; the "big rock," in the river, from
which we fished; the pond, that we thought had "no bottom;" the mountain
cliff, with its "den of snakes:" _where_ are those boys now?
Everywhere--nowhere! Citizens of the world, some; and some of that other
world. They will never be all gathered but once more.
But what has all this to do with Puddleford? Much. They are so many
pictures that I carry around with me, and they form a part of my existence.
They color life, thought, action; they mould the man; they are continually
inviting contrasts, and making suggestions; and I cannot omit to notice
them in my sketch of that famous village.
When I last saw my native village--it was but a little while ago--it lay
sleeping in its amphitheatre as beautiful and tranquil as ever among the
shadows of its elms. It was summer, and the air was rich with music and
flowers. The highest peaks of the mountain were draped in blue, and the
valley beneath was a waving sea of green, down which the sunshine chased
the shade. The quail was blowing his simple pipe among the fields of grain;
the drone of the locust, the clanging of the mower's scythe, and the shout
and the song, were heard in the fields in the still afternoon. When the sun
went down, and its last flash leaped from the vane of the church-steeple to
a lofty mountain-peak three miles away, the whippoorwill began her
plaintive song, and the night-hawks went wheeling through the sky. Then the
evening bells broke forth, and their echoes sobered the twilight; and, as
their last vibration expired along the valley, the river stood golden
beneath the rays of the moon.